Duke Nukem Forever to be Released on May 31, 2011?

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
Duke Nukem Forever... the butt of a billion jokes, and the biggest cause of grief for Duke fans. This game is unlike most others, because its development cycle has been at points, bizarre. It began in 1997, and has crossed the paths of multiple developers, with the most recent one being Gearbox Software. Since its original unveiling, it became questionable as to whether we'd ever see the game released, but now more than ever, we can actually be confident that it will happen.

duke_nukem_forever_preorder_010310.jpg

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
I'm sorry but any FPS PC gamer who was around from '96 on has been waiting for this game. Gearbox is getting a Christmas card this year. First Borderlands, now this.

I also hear rumors of Borderlands 2.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
I've seen that Gearbox is "considering" a Borderlands MMO. I sure hope not... I have a hard enough finding time to game as is.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
That's just it. When I play Borderlands, it almost FEELS like an MMO to me. The lone difference is the fact that it supports just four players. Boost that number to thousands, give the game a much larger landmass and a flurry of quests... yeah, it could be an MMO.
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
A friend and I were discussing that earlier today when I got to work. It would be so easy to implement as a full blown MMO. The weapon system is already in place. Just apply that same random generator to the shields and maybe make an armor option or equipment slots with again, that same random generator and you'd be laughing.

More classes, more customization...mmm...

I'd get on board in a heart beat.
 

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
If it were an MMO, would they go the grand environment route, everyone for themselves, the classic MMO stance like WoW, Lineage 2, etc... or the instanced route with lobbies, Raid Parties and such like with dungeon runs and Phantasy Star Online/Universe? It could so easily be balls'd up though, I mean seriously, how many MMO's become successful? So few that you can count them.

Game gets released, high praise, couple patches get released to fix major bugs and add content. Then the major lull happens and the 'Balance' patches start. Player skills/weapons get nerfed, items removed, they remove farming locations by changing spawn rates, the influx of spammers begins, GMs too 'busy' to ban the spammers on site. Next patch, more balance, since that last patch made certain skills underpowered, this now makes other skills too powerful, so they get nerfed... which makes other skills too powerful, so they get nerfed, and repeat and repeat. Then the big expansion comes, with more skills, new locations and more balancing... by this time 70% of the original players have moved on. The game looses direction, so they ask for feedback, the direction of the game is now handed over to a small vocal minority that play the game 27 hours a day, and thus concentrate all their time on PvP pwnage...

The above has repeated itself so many times over the years i've played MMOs and it's quite sad when it does. When I see people wanting an MMO of an RPG, they're just setting themselves up for disappointment. Borderlands is fine as it is, it's a multiplayer game that doesn't really need an MMO element, the system works. They could make a few changes, bits of extra content and such. Maybe introduce a closed network system like an MMO to prevent game save hacks. People will still call it an MMO, or an MMO with an identity crisis, but the underlining mechanics are fine... it's become successful for what it is, so why change it?
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Hehehe. A thread about quite possibly the longest anticipated game and we're all going on about Borderlands. I'm certainly not trying to sway the talk away from Borderlands since it's easily in my top 5 games but if Gearbox does as good of a job with Duke as they did with BL it's going to be a winner!
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
I'd pay to hang out with the guy who voices Duke, Jon St. John just to hear him say the lines...or anything for that matter.

Me: "Hey Jon! Go through your morning routine but do it in Duke's voice!"
Jon: "Damn...looks like my toast is f*****!"
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
From what I have read, yep! Not having Jon would be like not having Peter Cullen do Optimus Prime.
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
That's just it. When I play Borderlands, it almost FEELS like an MMO to me. The lone difference is the fact that it supports just four players. Boost that number to thousands, give the game a much larger landmass and a flurry of quests... yeah, it could be an MMO.

Seriously? I've tried four people with Borderlands, but the lag/latency issues were just too much. I couldn't snipe anything with any degree of reliability, and in some intense firefights someone would begin to lag and cause lag spikes for the entire group. International friend games are just not possible with Borderlands. I'm not sure how they can control the lag/latency issue for an MMO without some significant changes to the game...

The GameSpy account and issues with Windows Firewall / routers was bad enough, I don't have great confidence in their networking design choices. When Borderlands came out it required the user to manually make an exception for it with the Windows 7 firewall (Only program I've had to do this for since my most recent W7 install as a matter of fact) before it would connect to GSA's account servers. Otherwise it would simply state something to the effect that the account information couldn't be verified!
 
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